Product description

"April 1793, the French Revolution is four years old and the Committee of Public Safety under Robespierre finds threats to national liberty at home and abroad. When Gamelin, an ambitious and idealistic young magistrate, joins a group of old friends for a picnic outside Paris, the ties of love and affection can take the strain. But how strong will they prove when Gamelin is given power over life and death, and the new republic plunges from high idealism to mob rule and state terror? Private jealousies and public fears, old alliances and new ideologies, panic legislation and political correctness all combine in this thrilling adaptation of Anatole France s 1912 novel Les Dieux ont Soif. The poet Glyn Maxwell (whose Lifeblood was voted best play by the British Theatre Guide in 2005) brings a colloquial verse of great fluidity and immediacy to a story that is both fresh and relevant."

Author information

"Glyn Maxwell has long been regarded as one of Britain's major poets. He has been awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Prize, and the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as being shortlisted three times for both the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes. Three of his books were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. His One Thousand Nights and Counting: Selected Poems was published last year. Many of his plays have been staged in London and New York. They include The Lifeblood, which was British Theatre Guide's 'Best Play on the Fringe' at Edinburgh in 2004, Broken Journey and The Only Girl in the World (both Time Out Critics' Choices). Oberon Books publishes his Plays One (The Lifeblood, The Only Girl in the World and Wolfpit), Plays Two (Broken Journey, Best Man Speech and The Last Valentine), The Forever Waltz, Liberty, After Troy, Merlin and the Woods of Time and the libretti The Lion's Face and Seven Angels. "